


Hallowed Ground

by templeandarche



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mild Language, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2843114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeandarche/pseuds/templeandarche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Octavia won’t leave Lincoln’s side.  Raven gets that.  She fell from the sky inside a rusted death trap to get to Finn, to keep him safe.  And she still failed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hallowed Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Odyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, Odyle. Hope you enjoy.

They sent him back whole, and for that, and _only_ that, Raven is grateful.

He looks peaceful to her; all the guilt and fear that he’d carried like a weight since she’d crash landed on this rock was gone from his body. He looks like _her_ Finn again. The sweet boy-next-door who always made sure she had enough food to eat, helped her study for her Zero-G certification, and took her virginity when she was 16.

And who’d loved her long before then.

If she ignores the blood stains browning on his shirt and the slackness in his jaw, she could almost imagine him sleeping. Sometimes, back on the Ark, she would wait for him to fall asleep after they made love. He often smiled in his sleep, almost as if he was dreaming of her. She would gently trace a pattern with her fingers around his lips and lay her face against his chest and feel his heartbeat. She’d watch the rise and fall of his body and count each breath until she drifted away.

But the warmth has been leeched from his bones and he’s so, _so cold_ to her touch. There’s no smile when she touches his face. _Oh Finn_. 

Her boy is gone.

The tears fall hot and fast and when Bellamy pulls her off of the body she doesn’t fight him – she goes limp and lets him carry her away.

~*~

Everyone avoids her - no one knows what to say. Days earlier there was a mob of people calling for his head - now, they can’t even look her in the eye.

Octavia won’t leave Lincoln’s side. Raven gets that. She fell from the sky inside a rusted death trap to get to Finn, to keep him safe. And she still failed.

Bellamy blames himself for not thinking of a better plan; a way out. Hiding Finn at the drop ship was such a stupid idea, such a _teenage_ thing to do.

Funny how they’ve forgotten just how young they really are.

Abby is the only one who tries talking to her. She finds Raven at her work table in Mecha station, hunched over piles of scrap metal and broken parts of machinery looking for anything salvageable.

It doesn’t get very far.

“Would you have let them take Clarke, Abby?” Raven asks, not wanting to hear any of Chancellor Griffin’s excuses. “Can you stand here, look me in the eyes, and _tell_ me that you’d have watched her die?” She’s yelling now and so god-damned _angry_ that she doesn’t care that Abby flinches at her tone.

The other woman attempts to offer her sympathy with sorrow-filled eyes. “I wish we’d found a way to save him, Raven.”

That might be the truth, but it rings hollow and she takes no solace from it.

It’s also the only answer she’ll get from the new Chancellor, who seems to be adapting very well to her new leadership. Like any true politician she won’t admit any _real_ responsibility.

Abby and Kane and Jaha - they don’t understand. They sent 100 teenagers to an unknown Earth, with little supplies and no backup, on a gamble hoping it would save their own asses.

Now, they’ve lived like soldiers for so long that death is becoming second nature and squeezing the trigger isn’t as hard as it _should_ be.

Finn never would have become a murderer had the council not voted to send _children_ to Earth in the first place.

“You just keep telling yourself that Abby.” Raven doesn’t try to disguise the rage she’s feeling. “You still have your family.”

Abby doesn’t say anything and Raven glares at her before turning back to her work. This woman will never understand the pain she’s feeling. “Mine’s being buried out behind the fence line.”

~*~

She’s in the makeshift mess hall at Camp Jaha, outside under the stars (most nights she can’t bear the four walls around her; like the majority of the Ark’s refugees Raven finds Mecha is too small, and too full of memories of everyone lost on the way down), choking down her third cup of homemade swill that has an equal chance of being rocket fuel as it does alcohol.

She’s entering the stage where her vision’s a little blurry and her motor skills are sloppy. That’s ok with her - Raven wants to shut it down for one night and be able to sleep. One night to forget the little girl that swore she wouldn’t touch moonshine, not after watching her mother trade her rations to feed her habit, while her daughter starved.

She takes another sip and chokes the bad taste down along with the bad memories.

She still hasn’t seen Clarke.

She’s not sure if she can handle that right now.

Her table shifts and she spills half her glass before she can right the cup.

Raven curses and shakes the liquid from her hand. “Watch it, moron.”

“Sorry Raven,” he smirks back in reply, letting her know exactly how un-fucking sorry he is.

_Murphy._

He takes the opposite seat without invitation and sips his own rocket fuel. He looks like shit; his nose never healed right courtesy of Bellamy’s fist and she’s pretty sure he hasn’t washed his hair since the drop ship landed.

It’s petty, but it makes her feel better. She doesn’t want to be reminded of the story he told her in the aftermath of the Grounder barbecue.

Raven won’t let herself feel any sympathy for the son of a bitch who put a bullet in her gut.

“What do you want, Murphy?”

The look in his eyes unnerves her - usually he looks like he’s either looking down her shirt or like he wants to stick a knife in her back. Both piss her off. 

But here, he’s quiet. Contemplative and (almost) _sincere_.

“I’m sorry. About Finn.”

She refuses to look at him. She _can’t_ look at him.

 _Never show weakness_.

“Anything else?” she asks; her voice shaky and struggling to keep it together.

Murphy downs his drink in one long, stomach liner rotting gulp. He turns his empty mug over, slides it out of the way, places his hands palms side down, and runs them along the table.

“Would you have done it?” he finally asks, “Would you really have sold me out to the Grounders?”

Murphy’s hands stop moving and grip the table’s edges. His whole body tenses awaiting her response.

Raven knows he spent days being tortured at the Grounders camp. Hours of beatings and terror and wondering every minute if it would be his last.

But Murphy was twisted long before he was sent to Earth. He was shaped like she was, by a broken mother. But Raven chose a way out. Murphy chose to kill.

”Yes,” she whispers. “Yes,” she repeats, louder this time. “He was worth a hundred of you.”

“You put a fucking bullet in me, Murphy,” she adds. “I’d give you over in a heartbeat.”

She stands, the chair rubs against her brace and the metals screech. He winces at the noise and meets her stare, but there’s no heat in his gaze.

He breaks first and looks away.

It’s a small victory, but it’s hers.

Better yet, they’re even now.

~*~

Bel takes pity on her the next day and brings her fresh water and dry protein bars.

He holds her hair as she wretches and rubs her back, gives her some privacy to get cleaned up.

They head outside to her gate and sit, Raven with her leg jutting out beside her awkwardly.

It’s warm and the rain has stopped, so her ass is getting soaked through her pants. But she likes the way the air smells, and the company beside her.

When he finally speaks, she’s not surprised at his words. “You should talk to her, Raven.”

“You both loved him.”

Raven knows that and better yet - she doesn’t _care_ that Clarke loved Finn too. She made her peace with his choice.

What she can’t live with is the guilt they share; Clarke may have stuck the knife in and ended his life, but Raven put him on the drop ship.

Raven let him take the fall for her spacewalk.

Bellamy points; in the distance she can see the blonde hair shifting in the morning’s breeze and the metal marker glinting in the sun.

Raven reaches under her shirt and pulls out the long chain with Finn’s birthday gift attached.

The little metal bird warms in her hand.

She can’t forgive Clarke.

_not yet_

She can’t even forgive herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my ever amazing beta - you are wonderful.


End file.
